He remembered the summers of boyhood, not as a continuity, a part of his own history, but in one small instant ecstasy of pain, as if a bubble of blood were bursting in his heart. Borne on the air, it seemed, like dragonflies, as faint, as glimpsed, as fleet, came his regrets for what he had been, was, would never be. But they were gentle with him, as if to acknowledge them was partly to atone. Irrelevantly, the three of them walking brought back to him another night, and miners walking. He had been only a boy, ten, twelve years old, but he was there among them – miners, thousands his memory made them, walking through the darkness towards a hill. They held a meeting.
That memory still held him, when they emerged from the town along the river’s edge. The darkness was waiting for them like a friend. Having made the night’s acquaintance at moments in his journey through the town, Tam was still unprepared for the immediacy of its full embrace, the ripeness of its breath, the sweetness of the grass. The focus of sounds shifted, whispers magnified. The river, gagged by the town, survived its interruption to resume myriad tonal changes, like the articulation of infinity. Along the sound they walked in single file, Dougie in the lead, interpreting for them scutters in the grass, a baffle of movement somewhere in the dark.
Dougie was in no hurry to begin. He walked them long and when he found a place (a comfortably grassed chaise longue between two trees that was invisible till flattened, so that his skill had seemed to invent it), he sat down and took out his cigarettes. They smoked and talked, their voices moling gently back and forward in the darkness. It was good to listen to Dougie. He talked about poaching, stories of legendary whippets, wayward ferrets, night fishings when the catches had been Galilean. More than the anecdotes themselves Tam enjoyed the idiom in which they were expressed. Apart from the creativeness of his memory, Dougie made liberal use of expressions like ‘It was that quiet ye could hear the snails breathin’,’ and ‘The waiter wis oily, throwin’ the sun like arra’s in yer e’en.’ He was savouring the prelude to action, content to initiate them slowly into his joy in what he was doing. He didn’t lech after the salmon; he loved them truly.
The first part of the ceremony over, the baptism followed. They undressed quietly, sloughing three heaps of clothes among the trees. Phosphorescent with pallor, their bodies separated, flickering like tapers through the leaves. Tam and Dougie moved down river, Gibby in the opposite direction. The uncertainty of the surface they were crossing dehumanised their progress, feet raised and lowered jaggily, arms wavering for balance, so that they seemed like three enormous birds which had never fledged. Tam felt the coldness of the night film on his body like frost.
The method was simple. Taking an end of the net each, Tam and Dougie insinuated themselves into the water, which compressed the muscles of legs, torso, and arms in turn, like a torture box, until the coldness located the genitals and clenched there like a bulldog. Then they teased the net into a gentle curve behind them and started to swim very smoothly upstream, towards where Gibby should be. A strangled gasp located him. The noise didn’t matter, since his function was to cause enough disturbance to drive the fish towards them. He performed well above and beyond the call of duty. The water boiled above them and among the threshings, his curses and agonised pleadings played like flying fish. The impression was of a man acting in self-defence. Tam and Dougie felt small impacts take place within the steady pull of the river, like pulse-beats being missed. Slowly they swam the ends of the net together and hauled it out.
It was all done twice, with an interval for Gibby to offer up prayers of intercession to the god of poaching for the preservation of his manhood. They caught eleven good salmon and six or seven miscellaneous midgets, which Gibby wouldn’t allow them to throw back, saying he had a client for them.
Buffing his body back to warmth under the towel, Tam experienced a profounder feeling of accomplishment than he had known for a long time. When they were dressed and walking back along the river with their catch, he watched Dougie, a cigarette in his mouth, the smoke drifting round his nostrils like incense in the stillness of the night. His face reminded Tam of the way his father’s used to look when the family was returning from the Mass. Tam felt envious of the relationship Dougie had established with his life. With the chaos around him he had made his separate peace. Tam was wondering if he could do the same. The well-being he felt at the moment seemed like a promise.
Under the Riccarton bridge, Dougie cached eight of the salmon in a hole beside the river, to be taken to the back-door of the fish-shop in the morning. That gave them one each for the house, and Gibby still had what Dougie called ‘the meenies’.
‘Whit the hell d’ye want wi’ them?’ Dougie asked as they came through the backstreets.
‘They’re fur ma boss, see.’
‘Are ye aff yer heid? They widny make a breakfast fur a bumbee.’
‘They’re no’ fur eatin’. Mair a sorta food fur thocht. Ah’m goin’ up this wey.’
Gibby made a strange, internal noise of merriment, laughter in the dark caves of his cunning. They had halted on a corner.
‘Ye ken hoo holy auld Devlin is?’ The other two nodded. The factory-owner’s nickname was Jehovah. ‘When he peys the wages, he always has a wee service. Hymns an’ prayers. An’ by the look o’ the wages Ah think he chairges us fur them. Always talkin’ aboot “The Plan”. Everythin’ that happens has a purpose. Well, let ‘im work this yin oot. Hauf a dozen fish lying’ oan his porch at eicht in the mornin’.’ Walking away from them, Gibby had started to cackle. He shouted back, ‘If he disny stert buildin’ an ark in the back-door, it’s no’ ma faut.’ He bellowed, ‘Salmon! Fresh Salmon!’ twice, and merged with the shadows.
‘The bastard’s daft,’ Dougie said, not without reverence, and they walked on.
Coming in, Tam had the momentary sensation of having been away for a long time and yet felt the room fit around him like familiar clothes. After a couple of hours spent with the width of the darkness breaking across him like an ocean, the house seemed more minute than ever. Yet in some strange way this room was bigger than the night, absorbed it into itself until the excitement of the darkness disappeared.
Instantly, what they had been doing was in perspective. The vague notion Tam had had to take up the poaching seriously, to cultivate the pleasure he took in it, dissipated. He felt a little guilty, as if he had been a boy playing truant. He didn’t want to be like Dougie. Poaching was a nice enough way to pass the time. But being a man wasn’t a hobby. That was what they would like you to do: work your shift and take up pigeons, or greyhounds, or poaching, and hand your balls in at the pay-desk.
He looked round the room, grateful for its pokiness, its poverty. It was a place that couldn’t help being honest about who he was. In the glow from the fire the moleskins shone. He listened. Every breath drawn in this house made him bigger, both told him who he was and put demands on him. He heard Conn sigh in his sleep and wanted to see him grow up overnight. What would he be? An office worker? A teacher even? He listened to Jenny’s breathing, steady, peaceful – the pulse of his family. How in the name of God did she manage? His wonder was confused with her voice and her laughter and images of her body in bed. He felt an enormous upsurge of identity, and grew aggressive on it. He almost wished he could fight somebody now on their behalf.
Instead, he laughed to himself and started to make a cup of tea. The salmon lolled in the pail of water near the fireplace. There would be some for Buff and Aggie too. As he moved about, taking off his boots and jacket, buttering a piece, masking the tea, he was all the time making small superfluous noises. ‘Aye’, ‘Ah weel’, ‘Uh-huh’. It was a dialogue with his own contentment. In a few hours he would be back